Upgrayyed_U

Not software, but cyber. Currently working in a director of sales role in the federal space.

I mainly switched because I kept hitting the salary cap for cyber roles as a government contractor and got tired of being asked to move on to new contracts.

The transition has been difficult. Sales has a huge learning curve and even more so in government contracting. Selling to the government is it's own animal, since you can't talk to your customer directly (in most cases). So you have to do a lot of work to influence your bids indirectly.

I'm still undecided about whether I made the right move. I like having more influence in the day-to-day management of my org, but I jumped shipped right before remote work options and tech pay exploded, so a lot of my old tech friends are making as much money or more than I am for a lot less work.

I agree with your overall sentiment, though this definitely isn't limited to large businesses. Plenty of small businesses are plagued with hero culture as well.

What's really needed are leaders who recognize hero culture for what it is and are willing to move away from it. That's hard to do, in large part because managers benefit from it in the short-term and many will move on before the long-term costs become apparent. Given your previous example: Every manager wants to be the "winner" who gets the job done with 10 people, but what's unfortunate is that many of them will move up to the next level and claim that they would have success even with just 4 "good" people (re: heroes). So their replacement will get 4 people and the cycle will continue.

Not sure if it helps, but this is exactly how I read your earlier comment. I still don't quite understand the defensiveness coming from some of the responses.

This mirrors my experience as well. In the small and medium-sized business area, the "sociopaths" are the large businesses and private equity firms looking to acquire the smaller businesses. Or often it's the business owner who's the only sociopath in the business, but they are far enough removed from day-to-day operations that the people working underneath them don't recognize them as sociopaths.

Another thing I've learned is that the more time you spend with executives, the easier it becomes to recognize this behavior. Go to any large chamber meeting in any large-ish city in the U.S., and I'm sure you will find plenty of sociopaths (in both the literal and the Gervais Principle sense).

You can easily search for one online or LinkedIn. But generally, once you start running in certain circles (think executive networking and chamber of commerce type events), you'll usually find a bunch of coaches and mentors waiting for you there. Or, at the very least, you'll have a group of people who you can ask for leads for finding a good coach.

I searched for coaches in my area, did a handful of interviews, then went with the one I related best with. The only unique insight I can offer here is to take any recommendations with a heavy grain of salt. Counseling/coaching is highly individualized, and what works for one person could do absolutely nothing for you. For the reason, there's no harm in ending a relationship that isn't working for you.

If you're seriously considering it already, I say just do it. I'm a "normal" by your definition and have a both an individual counselor and an executive coach, both paid for on my own dime. I've committed over $10k between the two so far and feel like it's money well spent.

80% of the value for me has come from identifying hidden sources of fear and working through plans to overcome them. I'm naturally risk-averse and really had no real understanding of how much I was letting my own self-limiting belief system hold me back. A good coach can help you identify ways in which you're inadvertently sabotaging your own progress and help you to overcome them.

The other primary benefit (the remaining 20%) has come from having a completely new and fresh perspective on problem-solving. I can easily say that I've had more directly actionable "Aha" moments in the last three years of coaching than I had over the previous 20+ years of my career. For every "unique" problem you think you have, a good coach or counselor has probably seen some variation of it dozens of times and can probably offer you a half dozen useful ways of tackling the problem. It's the same thing that something like YC does for startups, but applied to you on an individual level.

The major caveat of course is that good coaches are often hard to find and you might have to search a bit to find one that works well for your specific needs. YMMV and all that.

This is where the entire libertarian ideology starts to fall apart for me.

Who does "contract enforcement" in a libertarian society? Who enforces "truth in labeling and advertising"? How do you scale those things without introducing regulation into the market?

Edit: grammar

Sure, it is now, but was that the case 20+ years ago when The Wire first aired?

This Porsche hot-take is about 20 years past due. Porsche practically invented the sports SUV in the early 2000s with the Cayenne. At the time, many Porsche enthusiasts were against the idea of a Porsche SUV, but many in the market point to that decision as one that basically saved the brand. They also have a line of EVs that compete directly with the higher end Teslas.

https://www.hotcars.com/truth-behind-why-porsche-cayenne-suv...

The problem with night mode is that it compresses the dynamic range of the audio which undermines one of the main benefits of having a home theater system. It's a poor compromise for bad audio mixing.

The referenced article is five years old, so of course it's going to miss some of the biggest trends of the last decade. They Are Billions and Northgard were both released on Steam sometime after this article was written.

The author also made it a point to narrowly define an RTS game as "one that involves base building and/or management, resource gathering, unit production, and semi-autonomous combat, all conducted in real time (rather than being turn-based), for the purpose of gaining/maintaining control over strategic points on a map (such as the resources and command centers)," which leaves MOBAs out of the discussion.

I think the author succeeded in his goal of providing a light history of the RTS genre during its peak years (early 90s to mid 2010s). The criticisms you have may be valid, but they are largely outside of the article's scope.

Counterpoint: I've actually made some of my best work friends during the COVID working from home era.

A lot of that was due to good leadership. My PM and tech lead setup a Discord for non-work-related discussions and encouraged its use by posting in there regularly. So we were able to replicate, to some extent, the hallway jokes, conversations, and bonding experience. We also had some infrequent but still valuable face-to-face meetups when COVID was at its low points, which also helped with relationship-building. Importantly, most of our face-to-face meetups were social and not work-oriented, so they left a lot of room for developing friendships.

To date, it's been the closest group that I've worked with by far. Many of us still hang out regularly. In fact, I just had drinks with one former coworker and his girlfriend last night. And I enjoyed the company so much that I wound up coming back to it after a short break.

My point is that it's still possible to create meaningful human interactions via Zoom and other digital tools. You just have to be more creative and hopefully work in a environment that properly supports it.

100%. I regularly point people to his video "Why Gifted Children are Special Needs." It and Randy Pausch's Last Lecture may be the only legitimately lifechanging videos I've ever watched.

One of his core messages is that we (meaning his target audience, mostly males under 40) generally have too high expectations of ourselves and place too much importance on what we're "supposed" to be doing with our lives vs what we actually want to do. Internalizing this idea has helped me move towards finding work and relationships that are more fun and fulfilling. I'm finding myself to be increasingly unconcerned with what other people think about me, which ironically has made me more relaxed and likeable.

Any sales process large enough to require an RFP will attract low-cost bidders who write good proposals but consistently fail to deliver quality work. Writing an RFP that's specific to a single company is one way to avoid dealing with the low-cost bidders.

Thank you for posting this. I'm a USAF vet and former reservist and guardsmen. Most of the rest of the comments here are FUD, but this one actually captures one of the biggest challenges of balancing military service with a developing career.

Here's the actual reality on the ground, from someone who's been in and around the military for ~ 20 years:

- A surprisingly high percentage of military personnel share views that would fit right in with the HN crowd. They are largely anti-war and anti-interventionists but continue to serve for a variety of other reasons. What you see on TV and TikTok is often a gross mischaracterization of who military people are and what they think.

- The military is an amazing escalator for the poor and lower middle-class. I know plenty of folks who started out as junior airmen making less than $25k a year in their early 20s who are solidly upper-middle class/rich millionaires in their 40s. Sure tech affords you the same opportunities these days, but that wasn't necessarily the case when the folks were getting started 20 years ago.

- As a rule, you generally have a lot of freedom when deciding which assignments to take as a reservist or guardsman, at least on the Air Force side. There are usually more volunteers for missions than their are slots available for people to go into. From my understanding, this is much less true on the Army side, where they will often deploy an entire unit on a mission. Anyone assigned to the unit most go, with few exceptions.

- The benefits are generally better than what the HN crowd are representing here. It's pretty easy to get a 4-year degree from a good (and occasionally great) school with little or no out-of-pocket expenses. You can also buy a house up to $650,000 in most areas (with adjustments for even higher cost-of-living areas) with $0 down and no PMI payment.

You've captured most of the downsides here. But for me, the biggest downside was that the military (at least during the time I served) has an extremely poor record of properly recognizing talent within its ranks. I worked with a lot of folks who could and often did land cushy jobs in SV. But back in their military jobs, they often were tasked with menial jobs that failed to take advantage of their talents. Yes, there are leaders that can and do recognize talent in their ranks. And the Air Force isn't nearly as hierarchical and directive as folks here would have you think. But rank still matters. I left when the delta between my "rank" in my civilian career and my military rank became to big to bear.

Already there: https://www.zoomgov.com Zoom for Government

Commuting.

It was crazy to see how quickly we "solved" this problem during COVID, if only temporarily. I just wish to see more collective action to solve this on a more permanent basis. I'm partial to WFH plus moving away from car-dependence in North American towns and cities.

Believe it or not, we use the same PPP format common in agile dev shops. However, instead of "Progress, Plans, and Problems," we use "Victories, Goals, and Help Needed" to give it a slightly more optimistic and personal feel. We also set aside time to discuss big picture items (such as challenges at work, medium and long-term relationship management, housing repairs, etc.).

We don't have kids, but if we did, we would definitely use this time to sync up about that. Make sure we both know what activities they have coming up and/or shared understanding of how to love, praise and discipline them.

I think 1-on-1s can be "unreasonably effective." In one group I managed, I implemented 1-on-1s and watched year-over-year attrition drop by ~80%. I thought they were so effective that I implemented them in my marriage and saw great (albeit, not directly measurable) increases in marriage satisfaction. If nothing else, my wife enjoyed them enough that she is now the one who insists that we have a "weekly connect."

With that said, I think that almost all of their effectiveness comes down to who's leading it. When I first become a manager, I assumed that I would probably suck at it, so I read everything I could on how to be a better manager. That was especially true when it came to leading 1-on-1s. But, when I've worked with managers who just didn't care for them, or didn't care to learn enough about how to do them properly, they were invariably a waste of time. So, despite my own experience, I don't begrudge anyone who thinks 1-on-1s are a waste of time. In many (most?) cases, they are.

Thank you for this. This is the first post I've read on this thread that acknowledges the reality of what it's like for career-minded infosec folks.

I'm a 15-year infosec vet. I'm not nearly as technical as some of the HN crowd would like for infosec guys to be, in large part because high technical is not something employers generally want and are willing to pay for. If you want to maximize pay, the best path is to learn just enough to be regarded as competent, then move into management, sales, or PM work. There's barely room for the highly-skilled, highly-technical cyber guy in most large companies, let alone SMBs. Most companies chop this ideal infosec role into multiple parts too minimize cost and risk, just as you describe.

Fair enough. Hard to argue with that.

You should check out this video:

Why Gifted Kids Are Actually Special Needs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjYy4Ksy1E. It is a truly excellent video for helping to understand some of the psychological/emotional challenges of being "gifted."

Internalizing the ideas spoken to in this video has been a huge gift to my mental help. For a long time, I held it against myself that I didn't try harder in college, and that if I did, I would be in a much better place. The reality is that for kids who do extremely well in high school with little effort, doing poorly in college is the default response. It takes a major intervention to get and stay on the right path, and many "gifted" kids of the past generations never got that since it was assumed they were smart enough to figure things out on their own.

I wish I would have partied more in high school and studied more in college. I didn't learn until too late that getting into a good school (at least back in the late 90s) came mostly down to raw intelligence and a bit of luck. The competition wasn't nearly as intense as it is now.

In college, I partied too hard at a time when I really needed to buckle down and improve my study skills. As a result, I dropped out, joined the military, and wound up down a much different life path than my collegiate peers who stayed the course. Things worked out fine in the end, but I feel like I would have had a more personally rewarding path if I would have stayed in school.

Search for audiophile forums on the net. Most will have a dedicated area for DIYers.